Thursday Movie Picks: Single Location Movies

Thursday Movie Picks is a weekly event hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. For this week’s theme (and future themes!), head over to her site. This week is about movies set in a single location. Here are my picks this week:

Air Force One
Setting: Airplane
Air Force One was one of my go-to popcorn flicks. The president’s plane gets under siege and it’s up to the president to save everyone on board. 

This is the End
Setting: James Franco’s house
This is the End has become the benchmark of Seth Rogen comedies. The actors play a version of their selves and get stuck in a house when the apocalypse arrives. This was really hilarious and one of the best comedies of the actors’ careers. 

Moon
Setting: Space station/moon
Moon is quite an interesting film. Sam Bell is an astronaut operating a space station on the moon. However, things go awry for him when he finds out that everything is not what it seems. I didn’t expect the direction the movie unfolded, but still a very good film.

9 comments:

  1. LOVE Moon. I used it earlier so I couldn't pick it again today. This Is The End is wonderful too. It's been a long time since I've seen Air Force One

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  2. Ah yes! Great call on these picks, haven;t seen This Is The End though. Love the other two. I think I'll watch Air Force One just for Oldman soon.

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  3. I love This is the End. I'm so happy someone picked it!

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  4. I forgot to put This Is The End on my list, one of my favorite comedies!

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  5. Love MOON too!! OMG. I would have pretty much the same choices. I might even jump on this post series, seems fun.

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  6. Terrific choices. Air Force One is as you say strictly a popcorn movie, but a fun ridiculous one. Love Moon and Sam Rockwell in it. A sharp extremely well directed film. I like Duncan Jones's next film, Source Code, a great deal too. Haven't seen This is the End yet.

    I stretched just a bit with two of mine. The first has a scene outside as a lead up to the main action and my bonus is just a weird head scratcher that in its strange way fits within the lines of the theme.

    Albino Alligator (1997)-Starting with a trio of bungling thieves running from a robbery gone wrong they quickly take refuge in an underground bar in New Orleans. Suddenly the joint is surrounded by police but who the cops are pursuing is a murky issue. While the standoff endures emotions run high and dangers escalate. Kevin Spacey directed this stylish throwback with outstanding performances from Matt Dillon, Gary Sinise, William Fichtner, Viggo Mortensen and a wonderfully tough Faye Dunaway.

    Ten Little Indians (1965)-Ten guests arrive at a remote mountaintop mansion only to discover they don’t know each other nor their missing host. Before too long they start being killed off one by one in the fashion of the poem Ten Little Indians. Can any of them solve the mystery before it’s their turn? Second screen version of Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None” updated to the swingin’ sixties with more hep identities for most of the characters, i.e. Fabian as a rock star and the former spinster now a movie star!

    Rope (1948)-Two men murder a third, a friend of theirs, just to see what it feels like than throw a party while his body resides in a trunk in the middle of the room. Alfred Hitchcock directed this version of the Loeb/Leopold murder. An interesting experiment, the entire film was shot in sequence in extremely long takes, but very stagy. Good performances by James Stewart as the professor who innocently plants the idea in the men’s minds and Farley Granger & John Dall as the murderous lead pair. For a film released in the 50’s the leads are surprisingly obviously gay though it is never explicitly mentioned.

    Oddball Extra:

    “Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?” (1969)-Superstar Heironymus Merkin (Anthony Newley) is filming a movie of his life surrounded by piles of junk and a bed on a ribbon of beach as his mother and children bear witness. While the Greek chorus of devil’s advocate Goodtime Eddie Filth (Milton Berle) and The Presence (Georgie Jessel) battle for his soul Merkin works his way to the top of show biz becoming a drug loving sex addict along the way. Yet he longs for his lost true love, Mercy Humppe (Connie Kreski) despite his marriage to Polyester Poontang (Joan Collins-Newley’s wife at the time, their real life children play their kids in the film-Thaxted and Thumbelina!). Watching the uncompleted footage in a parallel time the producers of this opus scream for him to come up with an ending. Merkin shuffles through his memories to find some value in his life while singing a couple songs and screwing like a rabbit.
    Confused? What with a title like that you were expecting coherence? Watching the film won’t clear anything up for you! Newley directed, produced, wrote & composed the music (all badly) for this exercise in vanity which was originally rated X. This one’s a stretch but in the bizarro world in which it exists it fits, even though it seems to take place in multiple locations it all turns out to really happen at different spots on that damn beach!!

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  7. Air Force One is a fun flick to watch. I don't take it too seriously although I think we would all wish we had a President or Prime Minister. I haven't seen the other films but they sound good

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  8. Why didn't I think of This is the End!? Brilliant pick! I love the other two as well. Just watched Moon for the first time.

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  9. I do love single location films (or ones where there's a predominant single location). Rear Window and Rope are a couple of Hitchcock's I love along with 12 Angry Men. Fast forward a bit and The Breakfast Club is another I like.

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